The Camomile Lawn

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The Camomile Lawn is a television adaptation of the 1984 book of the same name by Mary Wesley, produced by Glenn Wilhide and Sophie Belhetchet at ZED Ltd for Channel 4, directed by Peter Hall. It was adapted from Wesley's novel by Ken Taylor and first broadcast in 1992. It was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Drama Serial in 1993.

However, some characters were more enigmatic than others. For instance, we never get much of a sense of Oliver, who lusts after Calypso in a pretty ugly, entitled way and doesn't really do much to justify the love that Sophy nurtures for him her entire life. And we never really enter the inner world of the Floyer twins – although I suppose it's important for the plot that they basically seem like a unit, rather than two separate people with separate concerns. There was a comfortable life for the upper middle class that the war changed. Women didn't have to do things for themselves as they had maids, etc. It was also before children and women were bombarded with sexual images, and such frank talk wasn't always understood by innocent ears. We see this come into play quite a bit, not to say some of the characters aren't randy, just that a woman or a child wasn't as knowledgeable with the terms nor the act itself. It also plays strange because there is so much sex between this cast of characters, everyone using there sexuality for different purposes. It's a family drama set during the early years of World War II. In the last episode the characters meet at a funeral thirty years later, giving it similarities to the Big Chill. The main characters are seven cousins / friends who spend part of their summers in Cornwall at the home of Aunt Helena (Felicity Kendall) and Uncle Richard (Paul Eddington). The story begins in August 1939, before the Germans invade Poland. The friends, are mostly 18 or 19 and join the war effort when war is declared. The action then moves to London during the Blitz. The young cast all have an abundance of energy and charisma, especially Jennifer Ehle (Young Calypso), Tara Fitzgerald (Young Polly)and Rebecca Hall (Young Sophy). The novel i a study of war time Lonond and what war does to some people. It traps some but sets others free. Everyone’s life changes and the novel draws the characters into the activitites of thee war office and war intelligence. Having lived with two Jewish refugees, their expereince and reaction to the war is tested. Lewis Clive fell in love with Wesley and asked her to marry him. [1] In The Camomile Lawn, the character Oliver Ansty is a fictionalised version of Clive. [5]

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In 1970 Wesley was left impoverished by the death of Siepmann, and it was only then that she became an author, turning to writing as a way to restore her finances. [8] Final years [ edit ] Here is a novel which is of a very particular type, it’s almost (but not) a self-parody of the clipped we-don’t-do-emotion (well, we do, but we don’t go on about it) British School of No Nonsense. It’s about a family of cousins and others surviving or not through World War Two. They’re all fairly posh. They know how to tell a good claret from a bad one. They’re the lower level of the upper crust.

I was terribly moved by the segments of the book that focus on the older characters, and see them through the eyes of the younger generation. And I admired the skill with which Wesley interweaves these 1980s segments in with the 1940s segments, doling out just enough reminiscence and reflection at a time to inform each. There is a real sense of narrative momentum leading up to the funeral to which all the characters are travelling. Her take on life reveals a sharp and critical eye which neatly dissects the idiosyncrasies of genteel England with humour, compassion and irony, detailing in particular sexual and emotional values. Her style has been described as "arsenic without the old lace". Others have described it as " Jane Austen plus sex", a description Wesley herself thought ridiculous. [16] As a woman who was liberated before her time Mary Wesley challenged social assumptions about the old, confessed to bad behaviour and recommended sex. In doing so she smashed the stereotype of the disapproving, judgmental, past-it, old person. This delighted the old and intrigued the young. [17] Then comes the War. Men go to service, women contribute to the war effort in the top secret offices, there are supply shortages, coupons for clothes, air raids and telegraphs about killed and lost in action. Despite all that, life doesn't stop. On the contrary, life goes on and develops in most unexpected ways. Peacetime rules don't apply, vicinity of death makes everyone, young and old, look for happiness where it can be found and not, where the conventions suggest it should be…. A novel about a group of English cousins at the eve of WWII and what happened to them in the war, with flash forwards to the present day. We see much of the action through the eyes of Sophy, the odd girl out because she's much younger than the others and because of her Anglo-Eurasian race. As in other England at war novels, the war gives these young people opportunities for adventures – sexual ones – that they wouldn't have had in conservative pre-war days. There are some interesting twists in their emotional lives and several of the characters end up in places they never expected to go. I like that one of the women who finds herself behaving unconventionally is a woman in her 40s who had been the model of a good wife. I was obscurely pleased that the femme fatale cousin wears the same perfume I do, Mitsouko.

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This book is second in a sequence of novels; the first being Jumping the Queue, all written in Wesley's later years. Having enjoyed The Camomile Lawn so much, I plan to now read all her novels. I am so glad that a feature of Literary History in one of my GR groups introduced me to Mary Wesley. She is, ever so much, a bit of a feisty dame! 4★ So this book is all about a bunch of cousins who gather together at their Aunt’s large house in Cornwall, with yes, a Camomile Lawn, every Summer for their annual Holiday. As they leave their youth behind, and with what will be the 2nd World War approaching, this story focusses on their lives as the next few years pass and what affects their lives as they spend time in London, and sporadically return to their youth in Cornwall; the rationing, the derelict bombed houses, the air raids and the friendships and loves they find. Ah but it’s that fragrant Camomile Lawn which stretches down to the cliffs in the garden of their aunt’s house. Memories of the Roseland Peninsula? I heard about this on IG. I loved the pretty cover and photo placement. The bookstagrammer gave the impression it was about an idyllic summer before the war with cousins. THEY DIDN'T READ THE BOOK. (I'm quite put out by this betrayal.) It's absolutely not an idyllic summer and the book covers the entire war years and after as the characters make their way to the funeral of one of their own.